Oliver Sacks

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What a rollercoaster. At first I thought you were dying and I felt sad. Then I thought you were Oliver Sacks and I felt surprised, sad, and confused. Then I realized you are not dying, and felt relieved. Then I realized that Oliver Sacks is still dying and I felt sad again. Such a poignant and inspiring writer and thinker. He almost had me convinced to go into neuroscience at one point in my undergrad days.

Truly a great among greats. I hope he is granted dignity and peace in his final days.

I have always loved his books. What a sad, but beautiful article. Thank you for sharing.

Yes, it is sad - and it´s not. We all have to go at some point and this is written by a man, who looks back on a full life, determined to keep on being engaged with life until his dying day. No pain over unlived life there.

...are people posting responses to Sacks' article in the comment section where his article is published as well?

I also am a great admirer of his (I posted something as well- but not the whole thing). If you have something to comment to him (not the OP specifically), please consider going to the article and commenting there. I understand if you might not feel comfortable doing so, though.
<3

I've read several of his books, and they are inspiring. Its a shame that only one of them was ever made into a movie. I wonder if he will write of his own journey into the nether world. I picture him being found dead slumped over in front of his laptop (or typewriter), describing the details of how the cancer has affected his mind.

Oliver Sacks Dies at 82; Neurologist and Author Explored the Brain’s Quirks

An amazingly positive force in an often negative world.
RIP

I read his obituary in The Guardian last night. Shivered reading the cruel and vile behaviour of his mother ("I wish you had never been born" in response to him being gay) and other factors that quite probably led to his development of compassion for the suffering of others, who were also in some way different from the majority. He approached patients as human beings, not as conditions, and that approach tends to develop out of one's own suffering coupled with a sensitive nature, insight and other particular soul qualities that can make someone a "healer", in a more humane holistic way, rather than and 'expert' with a mechanistic or reductionist way of looking at the patient as a disease, a disorder, a number or an organ - another "case", whose soul doesn't matter (if they even conceive of these cases possessing souls..which most don't). So losses like this are so very sad because healers like Sacks are so rare. But when you meet one, or are lucky enough to be the patient of one (as I was with a particular surgeon) they leave a lasting warmth in your memory, soul and heart. You live on glad you were once ill enough to meet someone like that.

I felt a similar sense of sad loss at the death of James Hillman, "psychologist of the soul". Wonderful man. These people who touch our lives, even though we have never met nor spoken one word with them, though a sense of connection has developed, because we find meaning in their lives and work, and the loss feels personal. As Robin Williams' death also felt like a deeply personal loss.

Someone last night said to me "the whole world love Robin Williams, so why didn't he love himself enough to stay alive?" That is not a simple question. The simplistic default of "depression" seems to me just to be a superficial default answer to close down the dialogue. Maybe Robin looked at the world in a much wider way at the end and maybe he felt that it just wasn't the kind of world he wanted to live in anymore - "never a world for men, no place to breathe human air". Very occasionally (perhaps more lately) I wonder if I will make the same choice one day, that choice to go, because things progress to a point where I feel that I can't breathe here anymore, my soul won't be willing to tolerate any more of the daily millions of incidents of brutality that dehumanise us all in some way. But I am here now and Robin's death made me realise I have to live more self-protectively. His last gift to me. And we never met, not even for a second; but he is an important presence in my life all the same.

I felt a similar sense of loss in 2005 at the death of Scott Peck. His book "People of the Lie" was outstanding in its insight and wisdom, so far from the mainstream psychiatry in which he was trained (but far surpassed).

One small but significant life message from his legacy:
"Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.
Share our similarities, celebrate our differences."
It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually.

He was a rare gem.